If you have problems with GEAR finding CD/DVD devices that are present on your system, it is possible that there is a problems with opening the device files. GEAR has a diagnostic logging option that will give additional information about opening device files and the sending of SCSI commands to devices. This also applies to IDE and USB devices.

The diagnostic logging option is called "SCSILogging" and can be enabled on the GEAR command line:

"SETCDRDEFAULTS SCSILOGGING TRUE"

To be effective, you can use the following GEAR command sequence to capture a diagnostic log in a file.

"EXITCDR"

"SETCDRDEFAULTS SCSILOGGING TRUE"

"LOG MyDiagnostic.log"

"INITCDR"

"WRITECD MYVOLUME"

"LOG"

This will create a file MyDiagnostic.log containing diagnostic information. During the INITCDR command, GEAR will produce diagnostic information about the device files that it tried to open. In addition, during INITCDR and WRITECD, GEAR will log extensive information about the commands that were sent to the device.

In addition to the diagnostic logging options described above there is also an automatic diagnostic feature for the WRITECD operation. In case the WRITECD operation fails, it always creates a diagnostic log file, for support purposes. The log file contains important information for GEAR support. The file name of the diagnostic log, created in the working directory, is "gearwritecd_bXtY.log", where X is the bus ID and Y is the target ID of the CD/DVD recorder used. Included in the log are currently: